


felled by you, held by you

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad People Trying To Be Better, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Pining, Season 4 Spoilers, Undefined Relationship, depending how you slice it ig, have literally never used that tag before who is she, this is the shortest vaguest thing i’ve ever written but i needed to get it out of my drafts sry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22965619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: She knows that Basira doesn’t love her, not like that. It doesn’t bother her, really. She has her in every way that matters.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	felled by you, held by you

**Author's Note:**

> title from NFWMB by hozier bc yk. apocalypse lesbians
> 
> TW: canon-typical violence, nothing is explicit but there are mentions of blood (both like the substance and within the context of The Hunt). canon-typical moral failings, canon-typical cops being bastards (again nothing explicit, but general acknowledgment of past incidents)
> 
> it’s the last day of femslash february and i needed to stop messing with this so uh here we are

She knows that Basira doesn’t love her, not like that.

It doesn’t bother her, really. _We don’t have time_ , Basira would say, clipped and professional, but she’s never asked. It’s not in the cards for them, not now, and she accepts that.

She has her in every way that matters, anyway.

She has her back, obviously, and if she weren’t so damned tired maybe she’d take a moment to appreciate the pun. They’ve been partners for so long now that working together feels like breathing. She knows her patterns, her tics. Basira always drives the squad car. She always checks her corners twice. She always takes the left side of a room. Daisy fills in, acts as her complement. Takes the passenger seat, checks the doors and windows, gravitates toward the right. She knows that Basira appreciates her resolve, her surety, so she lends it more often than not.

She’s pretty sure she has her friendship. Basira huffs quiet laughs at the little jokes she makes sometimes, rolls her eyes in a way that would smack of fondness on anybody else. She asks questions, eyes sharp on the road in front of them. It started off as things relating to her sectioning, the things she’s seen, but on late nights it circles around to broader topics.

“Aliens,” she’d said one night, leaning back in the driver’s seat during a stakeout, and Daisy had looked at her, confused.

“What?”

“Aliens. You believe in them?”

They’d passed the time like that, Basira asking and Daisy answering, occasionally going back and forth about whatever the topic at hand was. Daisy doesn’t talk much, never has, but she’d obliged that night, and the next, and the next, unable to deny Basira much of anything with the moon reflecting off her skin and her normally rigid posture gone unspooled with the late hour, almost lazy. Intimate.

For all her questions, her propensity for talking things out, Basira keeps remarkably quiet sometimes. She doesn’t say anything when she notices the flecks of blood on Daisy’s hands, the fading growl in her voice. She tries to hide it, doesn’t want Basira to see that side of her, the monster, but she knows it peeks through. She knows that Basira has an inkling, even if she doesn’t know outright. It makes her feel sick, mostly, guilt gnawing at her in desperate, rolling waves, teeth aching with the need to be _better_ , to be _good_.

Sometimes, fresh off the hunt, the sickness doesn’t come, replaced instead with an awful pride, a heathen satisfaction so thick as to be almost cloying. They say that blue is the hottest part of a flame but she knows better, knows it’s really the firebrand of Basira’s brown eyes, narrowed and intent on the tight planes of Daisy’s stomach, the corded muscles in her arms, the too-sharp slash of her jaw. In those moments, blood thrumming in her ears, she sees Basira’s gaze linger on the dagger points of her teeth and instead of shame she feels _power_. Basira has an idea of who- of _what_ she is. She wants her anyway.

Daisy wants her back.

-

She can’t think about it, after the coffin. She’d spent too long trapped down there running the thoughts through her mind, the grooves of them worn to the point of being raw.

Basira is frustrated with her, she knows. She walks her through her exercises, sleeps back-to-back with her in the uncomfortable cot deep in the archives, lets her sit on the floor near her while she researches and reads and studies, but Daisy can feel the annoyance that permeates the air around her, the aura of resentment.

Basira has her back. She’ll take care of her, help her regain her muscles and her sanity as well as she can, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.

She hates feeling like a dead weight, a child, but she doesn’t know what else she can do. She listens to The Archers, tucked into the corner of whatever room someone is in, and lets the quiet wash over her in gentle waves. She talks to Jon. He understands, almost, their vices different but ultimately similar enough to give them a level playing field, and it feels good to have someone to talk to. She’s glad she never got to kill him, before, though his company makes the starkness of Basira’s stilted words and deep sighs stand out even more.

She awakes one night to find Basira curled around her in the cot, holding her with a tightness that immediately sets off alarm bells in her mind.

“‘s wrong?” she asks, hackles raised, trying to ignore the blood slowly stirring to life in her gut.

“Shut up,” Basira says sharply, tugging her closer. Her eyes glint angrily in the dark, jaw set tight. Daisy doesn’t pretend to understand, just tucks her face into Basira’s neck and goes back to sleep, but she finds her mind drifting to it later, replaying the warmth of Basira’s skin, the sound of her breath.

She improves, slowly. She walks around the institute with Jon, legs growing stronger every day, and makes trips up the stairs to check on Martin when she can find him. She’s softer than she was, still, but she’s gaining bits of herself back, the parts of her that weren’t only the Hunt. She makes jokes, makes plans, tries to get some semblance of fight back in her without letting it morph into bloodlust. Sometimes she catches Basira looking at her strangely after she speaks, as if deciding something. She shrugs it off.

She’s not surprised when she starts to lose weight, when the need for the chase makes itself known in painful twists of her stomach and an itching ache in her throat. She fights it off anyway.

“Someone’s got to set an example for you lot,” she tells Jon once, nudging at his worried form with a pointy elbow, and Basira’s face pinches.

“You shouldn’t let yourself waste away,” she starts, and Daisy waves a weak hand. They’ve had this argument before. She’s made up her mind.

She still wakes up with Basira’s arms around her, some nights, clutching her like she’ll disappear right out from under her hands. Neither of them say anything about it when they wake. They both know.

-

Basira knows as soon as she starts to ask, and that hurts almost worse than the blood thrumming through her veins, her head, her ears, pounding into the very core of her. They know each other so well. Even with growls rising in her her throat, her teeth sharpening in her mouth as the hunters descend on them, Basira knows her. Maybe she knows her best this way. The thought pangs deep in her chest.

“These last months, I’ve- it was always borrowed time. Can’t outrun it forever.” It’s the truth. She’s never thought they’d get a happy ending, isn’t even sure she’d want one, after all she’s done. She’s had a long time to think about it.

“ _Daisy_ ,” Basira says, like she hadn’t said the same thing only moments before, and Daisy turns from the blood, from the end of the world, to look at her, to watch the shape of her name form on her lips. There’s something in Basira’s eyes alongside the terror and anger and calculation, something glass-spun and sharp-edged, fragile and deadly. Something that makes her wonder if she’s been wrong all along, if she’s missed something in between the need and the want.

 _You can’t_ , something in her says, growls, shouts, and she’s not sure if she’s talking to Basira or herself. The hunters are getting closer, the blood rushing faster, louder, and she knows she doesn’t have much more time. _You can’t_.

She’s never been a hero. They’ve never been a love story. It’s too late, now. She won’t keep being this thing, this monster, even if it means she gets to stay by Basira’s side. She could, could feed herself lies about _Avatars_ and _agency_ and press copper-tinged kisses to Basira’s skin, guilt-free, but she knows the truth. It’s her. It’s always been her. She won’t let it be her any more.

“Promise me,” she demands, and watches the delicate thing in Basira’s eyes turn to steel.

“I promise,” she spits, and it sounds like something else, like _I love you_ and _I hate you_ and that damned sureness of hers, the one that gets her into trouble and back out in one piece, and Daisy knows she’ll keep her word.

“Thanks,” she says shortly, meaning it more than she can fit into the seconds they have left. _I always knew it’d be you_ , she thinks, wishing that she had time to press the words to Basira’s lips, her collarbones, the back of her hand. _I’m glad of it_. “Now run.” She turns, some desperate, soft-bellied part of her hoping that the last glimpse Basira gets of her will still be _her_ , the her that she wants to be, and when Basira says her name again she growls.

“ _Run_.”

Daisy can feel herself shifting as the blood consumes her fully, all of her edges sharpening into hard points. It feels perversely like coming home, like stretching out after a long day’s work, like Basira’s head on her shoulder. Some part of her is appalled, blasphemed, but it fades into the background as the hunters come into sharp focus and everything else drops away. They’re laughing, sprinting towards them at a speed she can feel in her legs as her muscles tense, eager for action. She can smell their sweat, their blood. Her mouth buzzes with the taste as she slips into a fighting stance, tongue running over too-sharp teeth.

Basira turns and runs, leaving her to face them alone. She doesn’t look back.

Daisy loves her for it.

**Author's Note:**

> jonny sims be like *creates interesting complex imperfect female characters that i would like to shake very hard but also hold*


End file.
